Ketol-acid reductoisomerase (KARI) enzymes are involved in the biological production of valine and isoleucine. KARI enzymes have also been shown to be useful for pathways for the production of isobutanol using engineered microorganisms (U.S. Pat. Nos. 7,851,188 and 7,993,889). Such microorganisms can be used to produce isobutanol from plant-derived substrates.
While methods for the chemical synthesis of isobutanol are known (oxo synthesis, catalytic hydrogenation of carbon monoxide (Ullmann's Encyclopedia of Industrial Chemistry, 6th edition, 2003, Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH and Co., Weinheim, Germany, Vol. 5, pp. 716-719) and Guerbet condensation of methanol with n-propanol (Carlini et al., J. Molec. Catal. A. Chem. 220:215-220, 2004)), these processes use starting materials derived from petrochemicals and are generally expensive. Furthermore, chemical synthesis of isobutanol does not have the potential for environmental advantages such as minimization of green house gas emissions. Production of isobutanol from plant-derived raw materials would represent an advance in the art.
A KARI enzyme that can utilize reduced nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (NADH) can capitalize on the NADH produced by the existing glycolytic pathway and other metabolic pathways in commonly used microbial cells and may result in improved isobutanol production. U.S. Pat. No. 8,129,162 and US Appl. Pub. No. 2010/0197519A1 describe the generation of KARI enzymes with varying abilities to utilize the cofactor (NADH). However, there remains a need in the art for alternative polypeptides that have KARI activity suitable for production pathways such as isobutanol biosynthetic pathways.